Tech Rebound Ahead?

SAN DIEGO, Calif.--The technology spending recovery is coming--next year, says Gartner chief executive Michael Fleischer.
"We see a high probability of significant improvement coming to the technology sector in 2004," Fleischer told attendees of Gartners spring 2003 Symposium and IT Expo.
The reasons:

Massive delays in upgrading and replacing hardware and software will end. "These needs can be deferred for only so long," he said.

Costs to maintain existing equipment and code will begin to cost more than buying new systems.

Increasing performance and lower prices will spur purchasing.

The free operating system for corporate servers, Linux, is now "ready to support serious applications," and,

Wireless systems inside companies will grow, partly because suppliers such as Intel and Cisco system will be "literally giving away key technologies."

Fleischer stipulated two caveats: the war in Iraq has the potential to cause "massive economic disruption" and delay recovery; and, investor appetite for risk is low, meaning few necessary mergers and acquisitions will take place.
In the meantime, oversupply of such infrastructure as communications bandwidth, economic uncertainty, political risk and "flagrant corporate wrongdoing" will make the outlook for the rest of 2003 bleak.
"Today, we find ourselves almost universally at a point of deep pessimism," Fleischer told the first gathering of the symposiums 1,700 attendees, down from 1,800 a year ago.

"All in all, its hard to imagine how our business and political affairs could be moving in a worse direction.

Editor-in-Chieftst@ziffdavisenterprise.comTom was editor-in-chief of Interactive Week, from 1995 to 2000, leading a team that created the Internet industry's first newspaper and won numerous awards for the publication. He also has been an award-winning technology journalist for the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram. He is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and the University of Missouri School of Journalism.